flag of the Republic of China, was sewn in the Sun Yat Sen Villa by Teo Eng Hock and his wife. 1915 Singapore Mutiny Singapore was not directly affected by the First World War (1914–18), as the conflict did not spread to Southeast Asia. The most significant event during the war was a mutiny in 1915 by sepoys of the 5th Light Infantry from British India who were garrisoned in Singapore. On the day before the regiment was due to depart for Hong Kong, and hearing rumours that they were to be sent to fight the Ottoman Empire, about half of the Indian soldiers mutinied. They killed several of their officers and some civilians before the mutiny was suppressed by British Empire and allied forces plus local troops from Johore. Singapore in the 1920s and 1930s This is how Lee Kuan Yew, its Prime Minister for 32 years, described Singapore: I grew up in a Singapore of the 1920s and 1930s. The population was less than a million and most of Singapore was covered by mangrove swamps, rubber plantations, and secondary forest because rubber had failed, and forests around Mandai/Bukit Timah took its place. In these early decades, the island was riddled with opium houses and prostitution, and came to be widely monikered as "Sin-galore" Naval base After the First World War, the British government devoted significant resources to building a naval base in Singapore, as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire. Originally announced in 1923, the construction of the base proceeded slowly until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. When completed in 1939, at the very large cost of $500 million, the base boasted what was then the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and having enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months. It was defended by heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Air Base. Winston Churchill touted it as the "Gibraltar of the East" and military discussions often referred to the base as simply "East of Suez" The base did not have a fleet. The British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe, and the British could not afford to build a second fleet to protect its interests in Asia. The so-called Singapore strategy called for the Home Fleet to sail